Hi guys,

It's been a while since my last blog post, so there's a lot to catch up on. Looking back, I never explained what happened with roulette. I posted about it on 2+2: the vic in edgware road, london, offered 40-1 on a 36-1 shot individual number on each roulette wheel for two hours each day throughout july, the number being the day of the month.... they cut it short about 6 days before the end, I think, but we got together a group of poker players to grind the tables and a roll of about £30k between us and made £55k profit, which was fun. My month as a 'professional roulette player'. Fun times.

Since then, I played Luton GUKPT, bust out at the end of the first day on a coinflip for the chiplead then misplaying a pair of 9s. I gave up cigarettes, which is a pretty solid brag. The week after I gave up, I was on my way to meet some friends in a bar, and was thinking 'this is my first real test, but at least people will be inside, and so can't smoke'. But when I got there everyone was outside in the beer garden, my friend Hugo lit a cigarette, said hi to me, and someone called him in, so he put the lit ciggie in my hand and walked off - but I resisted, and that's how I know I've given up for good.

Around October I made the decision to stick to stars. I liked the idea of getting to supernova, I couldn't manage it, as I was only generally playing 6-8 tables, and rarely more than 20 hours a week maximum, but stars was my choice on the basis of actually finding the games more than beatable (previously I had the idea that stars was a rock garden and short on value), but mostly as a response to the various scares that have been going on in the online poker community. Stars have a (justified, in my experience) reputation as the industry leaders when it comes to running a good, honest game, and I'm quite anal about this sort of thing. I'm sure I've been cheated on stars before somehow, but you get the feeling with other sites sometimes that things just aren't as kosher as they should be, and even when they are, support is never as classy or competent as stars. /pokercast

Considering I'd just been through a fairly extended (~4 months, 50k hands?) breakeven patch, my confidence was a little gone, also, so I decided to make a rather large adjustment to my play: tighten up. I also wanted to drop down in stakes, to beat games I knew I could destroy, and at a level that wouldn't stress me out if I ran bad, so I took $5k and played PLO$100 and using strict bankroll management, only moving up to PLO$200 when I got to $10k. I also intended to get myself playing more tables, and trained myself by pushing myself considerably harder than previously used to for a while, then dropping that down to get comfortable, and then pushing myself again - and now I'm comfortable playing 12 tables but consider that my normal (current) upper limit. In order to get comfortable there I have to push myself by playing 13 or even 14 - and I do that from time to time - but 12 is much more profitable.

So as well as playing higher volume, I was playing tighter, which meant that I ran smoother, which meant I tilted less, which meant I had a bigger edge, and I ended up running hot as well. I ran at something like 12 ptbb/100 at PLO$100 and $200 for 45kish hands (stats are posted somewhere on 2+2) making a nice healthy profit, and enjoying the process as well. That was over about two and a half months, so still I wasn't doing much volume in terms of hours - but with other commitments, such as coaching, cardrunners, live play and articles, I'm not too dissatisfied with the amount of time I worked, especially given I'd be likely to make supernova in June of this year if I continued at the pace I was at.

I had a few frustrating experiences with tournaments, though, and swore myself off them for a while - until christmas in fact. Definitely running bad, but also definitely playing bad early doors, seeing too many flops, running too many bluffs. My endgame was still fine, as was my composure, but technically I had a few big leaks.

About three weeks ago, I went to my usual cardroom in London, the Gutshot (now called the International), and while waiting for the regularly running and incredibly juicy PLO game, I took a seat in a NLHE game. As I sat down, I watched the guy to my right play a hand and said to him straight away afterwards 'you're 2+2 aren't you' - he laughed and said yeah, it turns out he's a high volume low stakes sng/mtt expert. I found him a staker, and have been informally coaching him some PLO cash, while getting the benefit of his tournament wisdom - much cheaper than paying for coaching as I was intending a few months ago. We started off on SNGs, and my game seemed to resemble his - I wasn't quite pushing early enough, and was raise-folding when I should have been folding or shoving - but the reasons behind my play and general strategy were sound.

I've been playing much more tournaments since then, and have a lot more confidence. No real success, but it's a high variance game, and feel like I'm playing well. Last night I played a £300 tournament at the gutshot, lost most of my 10k starting stack within the second hour (half an hour levels), but ran and played well later, only to bust cruelly about four hours in. With my 3k stack at blinds of 2/400, I was shoving any hand that I played, and ran it up to about 4.5k. Antes came in at that point to make it 200/400/25, so eight-handed I shoved my Q8o from the hijack, and the button found TT, I hit my Q on the river and survived. Blinds up to 3/600/50 and I find aces, making it 1500 to go from early position a few hands later. The button shoves all-in for 5k, and the big blind overcalls. I moody for a little (entirely unnecessary now, I realize) and shove all-in - he calls and shows AK, the button 66, I hold and now have a 26k stack. At some point during all this I won a coinflip, but it wasn't a crucial one. Next interesting hand - UTG has been playing fast and well, and is one of the four players who started on the table with me that I feared, but knew he was loose. Still at 3/600/50 he makes it 1500, folds to me in late position, I find KQs and make it 5500, with the intention of snapping any shove, as he only had another 3k behind. He says 'I think we're flipping' and shoves, I table my hand, he shows KQo and I turn a flush. A few hands later I'm chopped back down to 29k, and with blinds at 400/800/75, I find myself sitting in the cutoff with JT of diamonds, so make it 2k. The big blind appears to have been on the loose and passive side - having openlimped and folded to raises a few times - but I don't have much of a read on him. The flop is 2 5 8 all diamonds, which, obviously, I like. He checks and I bet 2k into about 5k, he calls. The turn is the T clubs he checks, and I decide that a small bet on the flop combined with a big bet on the turn makes it look like I'm FOS or semibluffing, so bet 7k into about 9. He moves all-in and I superturboinstasnapcall. He tables KQ diamonds, I'm left drawing dead, but I cover him by 2k. If I'd won that pot, I would have been chiplead, albeit with 60 remaining - no point dwelling on the past, though, and my task at hand was to play my last 2.5 big blinds perfectly. JTo was good enough with the likelihood of a 4-way pot and probably quintupling up, but AQs hits and I'm left drawing dead.

Leading up to this, I hadn't actually been playing at all for the last few weeks. I'm prone to depression from time to time, and at the start of the year, I just wasn't feeling myself. That lasted about a week. I then resolved to give up weed, but not 100%, not like cigarettes - I enjoy the social aspect of it, but really don't have the capability of having weed of my own and not smoking it. So essentially I'm just giving up buying my own - but that's a fairly big deal, I feel, spending at one point upwards of £100 (when it was worth something) per week for my own personal use. Now it's more like a joint once a week on average. Much healthier.

Afterwards, I had no real excuse not to be playing, but I just couldn't force myself, and instead spent much of my time playing and getting good at Call of Duty on my PS3. It's still a bona fide distraction, especially with deadlines looming. I've played live two nights on the trot, though, and feel like I played each better than I've played before. Obviously a small sample size, but I do feel that I understand poker better than I have done, ever. I put this down to the specific sequence of events of grinding hard for a couple of months, then taking a few weeks off, but discussing (posting on 2+2, coaching) poker on my downtime. I compare it to learning a musical instrument - if you practice a piece lots, say every day, after a while you feel you're getting worse at it, you get frustrated, and take some time off. When you come back a couple of weeks later and try that piece again, you find yourself playing it technically well and it sounds great to boot.

On live cash games: there are many little nuggets of reciprocal edge to be found in this game, whether it be by tilting less, having better sleeping patterns, being better-fed and generally more healthy, as well as the standard ideas of table/seat selection, technical ability and physically reading players. One aspect, though, which I feel can generate some serious profits, is stack management. I usually buy in for £100 or the minimum in any game I play, with ten times that in my pocket. The idea is that I choose the stakes I play for, not others. I'm least likely to be playing my A-game right at the beginning, so by reassessing after an hour or so I'm giving myself the option of buying in deep to cover some targets when I'm playing a little better. By continually assessing how I'm playing as well as the rest of the table, I can come up with some idea of optimal stack management. Out of position to some strong players, I'm either going to get up, or buy in short - but if I find a good seat where I've got position on some fish who are £500+ deep I'm at least going to stack up if not cover them. As explained in a video of mine, the idea is that my stack is in play in position more often than it is out. My feeling is that good understanding of this concept is crucial to exploiting not only the fish at the table but the otherwise good players also. In some areas my game lacks - so I must make up for it. On friday night I felt that edge was worth up to £10/hour on its' own - pretty substantial for a £1/2 game, even though it played completely out of proportion to the size of the blinds.

In other news, I've had a commission from Poker Player UK to write a few articles on pot-limit omaha. The first two are written already, the first of which published, the second will come at the end of this month, and the third is due to be finished by the end of this week. The commission is for eight articles in total, and is essentially an introduction to PLO. The first has been generally well-received, and I see this as my stepping stone into greater things. I don't want to be 30 and still grinding poker for a living - I love the game, of course, and see myself playing it for the rest of my life - but I'd be disappointed if I haven't made significant progress in my career by that time. Regardless of how successful I am in my poker career, I'd like a qualification - I dropped out of two different degrees, to my eternal shame, and journalism strikes me as a career choice that I can really get into. My intention is to start a part-time journalism course (very near to the gutshot, as it happens) in April. The long-term plan is to rock up to the Bluff Europe and Cardplayer Europe offices in 2010, saying 'Hi guys, here's what I've had published before, I've been playing poker professionally for a few years, maybe you know who I am, this is what I'd like: you send me to Macau, Monte Carlo and Vegas and a few other venues you want me to go to, pay my way, and I'll write you a few articles and columns every month.' Perhaps a little ambitious - but it strikes me as a pretty 'noble' ambition, to lead the jet-setting lifestyle, hobknobbing with all the big names, and playing poker for fun rather than with the pressure of rent-checks and bankroll-building.

That's all for now, I think - I have lots to say, having failed to make an entry in this blog for almost eight months. I just recorded another PokerEV video for you guys, which should be up next week, I believe.